Battlestar Galactica and Spimatic Meaning in Games - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 83

throughout the game play, and there is a temporal countdown feeling as they
tick ever further down to zero on the board. It is possible that no player will be
dealt a Cylon loyalty card in the irst round of the game; there is a second round
of loyalty card dealing during which there will deinitely be one hidden Cylon
card dealt. his means that the irst round may contain a sleeper agent, a player
who doesn't even know if he or she was a Cylon, but is “activated” for the inal
few rounds.
he gameplay mechanic of the hidden Cylon in BSG08 thus resembles the
temporal structure of the original show's narrative, in the same way Knizia's Lord
of the Rings parallels the topic's structure. he tension in the game arrives from
not knowing who the Cylon is, and, for those who are not the traitor, waiting
for the Cylon to reveal himself or herself. Like the television series, which
increases tension both by hiding the character's true loyalty and by postponing
narrative closure via clihangers, the BSG08 board game replicates this feeling
of uncertainty by increasing suspicion and fear among the players. Bergström,
Björk, and Lundgren speciically describe BSG08 's gameplay design aesthetic
through its “dynamical patterns [of ] Communication and Collaboration
using the mechanical patterns teams and mutual enemies in combination
with asymmetric abilities.” 19 hat is, players must play cooperatively but also
defensively in order to “out” the Cylon player as Cylon. he game ofers diferent
playing styles depending on the role that one is fulilling. Players that are playing
as the Cylon can engage in what Lewis Pulsipher calls “turtling,” or sitting “on the
sidelines, avoiding conlict, while other players ight a debilitating war.” Other
Cylons might actively reveal themselves in order to deal the most devastating,
overt damage. In contrast, players that are not Cylons may try “sandbagging,” or
“pretending to be worse of than you are, to somehow disguise how well you're
doing,” to hide their success from the traitor. 20 Deception is a key element of the
game.
A side-efect of both this spatial and temporal structure for each game is that
the players must inhabit these various aspects of the original text in order for the
game play to function. hat is, in BSG78 , players must subscribe to the spatial
rules—“you may move your Viper horizontally and vertically, but not diagonally,”
indicating a two-dimensional playing ield—in order to mimic being part of
the television series, while in BSG08 players must act the way their loyalty card
prescribes in order to further the temporal structure of the game. 21 Although
players do have the freedom to move and act as they see it, the demands of
the games determine most of this activity; players themselves become pawns